Mercifully for Kylie Minogue, she shows up briefly in Denis Lavant's god-awful movie Holy Motors which has its world premiere red-carpet screening tonight as an official entrant in the Cannes Film Festival.

Brave Kylie will walk the fabled Cannes red-carpet at the Grand Theatre Lumiere Wednesday night but I notice Eva Mendes, another of the film's stars, is giving the movie a wide berth and is staying well away.

I suspect Mendes's snub might have something to do with a scene where a man with an inflated sexual organ dances around her and licks her inappropriately. Kylie's scenes are sex-free.

Kylie, 44 next week, is featured in the film for fifteen minutes, maybe less, and I kept thinking of her early hit I Should Be So Lucky when it became clear that her dual character Eva/Jean wasn't going to be hanging around for long.

I would love to be able to tell you what purpose she has in the film. The little she has to do she does well. Our Kylie has always known how to make the camera work for her but she has no control over the construction of the scenes Carax has written for her.

I can tell you she mutters something about having 'the strangest feeling' and I was with her on that.In her scenes she wears a mackintosh and sings Who Were We and Couldn't Get You Out of My Head.

Eva/Jean has obviously had some past tumultuous relationship with one of the eleven freaky characters played by Denis Levant who through the film morphs into a variety of weirdos each time he exits a white stretch limousine.

One minute he's a crippled beggar woman, the next an assassin, and later he's in-twined in a cyber coitus pas de deux.

The strangest encounter involving Levant though has him entering the Paris sewer system only to emerge in the Paris cemetery where he wonders about munching blooms left on graves. He alights upon Eva Mendes who's playing a cover girl modeled on Kate Moss.

Mendes wears a golden gown and Levant lusts after her by licking her blood-splattered under-arm. Then he strips naked and rests his body, he is by now displaying a tumescent member, on her lap.

His erect private part flaps about a bit but this is Cannes so no one was shocked. I guess this just isn't a movie for your Aunt Doris.

Thinking it all through, I can see that Carax is trying to make a comment on evolution. I mean, how else to explain one of Levant's characters shacked up with two chimpanzees